Habitats - Life in a Field

Focus: A habitat provides plants and animals with food, water, shelter, and a place to raise young. Fields are home to many interdependent species of plants and animals.

Puppets (Marsha Mouse, Mother Mouse, Maria Monarch, Cindy Squirrel, Cappy Chickadee, Bernie Beaver)

Materials checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script)
Who am I ? (signs with the picture or name of each animal and its food)
Field Food Web (a sun made of a yellow paper plate with 5-7 three-foot pieces of string attached to edge; 5-7 green paper headbands labeled with one of the following: leaves, twigs, berries, flowers, seeds, grass, roots; animal cards from Who am I? activity; 2 ten-foot pieces of yarn per child)
Silent Watch (a watch or stopwatch)
Field Finds (Field Finds cards, pencils, clipboards, hand lenses)
Field Haiku (5/6 ELF) (paper, pencils, clipboards)
Popcorn Food Chain (optional - not in Hands-on Nature) (yellow hat, bowl of popcorn, 12 green headbands, signs from Who Am I? activity)

Supplementary Reference Materials("Who Am I?" pictures, Field Find Cards, Habitat Song, ELF 5/6 Activity: Field Haiku)

Additional Reading/Resources
The Book of Field and Roadside, by John Eastman, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2003.
Field Guide to Wildlife Habitats of the Eastern US, by Janine Benyus, Fireside Press, 1989.

Teaching suggestions
Puppet Show
It's fun to bring in a box of crickets for sound-effects during the puppet show.

Who Am I?
For younger children especially, Who Am I nametags should include illustrations. You could begin this activity by having animal pictures mounted on a poster. Discuss each and what it eats before playing the game.

This can also be done with younger students by having the leader hold the picture above her eyes (where she can't see it but the students can). Leader then asks the students questions until she can guess the animal.

You might also do this activity by dividing the class into two teams. Show the picture to one team, and have them (one at a time!) give clues to the other team. Once they've guessed correctly, switch roles.

A variation for older children: have each child find a partner and ask 3 yes or no questions apiece then move on to new partner – until identity is determined.

You might want to have a list of all the creatures up on the blackboard to make guessing a bit easier.

Field Food Web
For younger children, stick with food chains. Illustrate food chains by assigning children roles as plants, herbivores, and carnivores. One person is the sun. Ask a plant, an herbivore and a carnivore to join hands, with the plant holding onto the sun. Arrange other children in similar chains. Illustrate how energy moves through the chain by squeezing hands in sequence from sun/plant up to carnivore. What happens to a chain when one link is removed?

Or, use small bags of popcorn to illustrate energy transfer. Each “plant” gets a small bag of popcorn from the sun, and eats a good handful of it. Then each “plant-eater” takes popcorn bag from two plants and eats some, but not all, of the popcorn energy. Finally, each “meat-eater” takes the popcorn bag from three plant-eaters. Did the plants pass on all their energy to the plant-eaters? How many plant-eaters did it take to provide enough energy to the meat-eaters?

Or, do as a quick demonstration of a food chain. With kids using their signs from Who Am I, ask everyone to sit in a circle. Leader has a few props: a big cardboard sun and a bucket of grasses and wild field flowers. Tell kids that plants get their energy from the sun. Ask, who might get their energy from the plants? Ask one of the herbivores to come stand next to the plants. Who might eat this herbivore? Ask one of them to come up. For example, call up the grasshopper as a plant eater. Then the spider that might eat the grasshopper and the bluebird who might eat the spider and the sharpshinned hawk who might eat the bluebird. Who might eat the hawk? Top predator. Who else in the room is a top predator? What happens to the top predators, though, when they die? Consumed by Decomposers – we'll meet these next month.

For older children, include some decomposers and scavengers when discussing what happens to animals if plants die.

You could simplify the food chain discussion simply by passing around popcorn for kids to eat, talking about how the popcorn grew on a corn plant in a field, and we like popcorn – so there's an example of a food chain.

Rather than using string to show connections, just have children place their hands on others' shoulders.

Create a field mural by drawing a variety of plants on a long sheet of newsprint paper. Using the pictures provided for the Who Am I? activity, children can use yarn and tacky tack to illustrate a food web. Mention decomposers and note that we'll meet them in more depth next month.

Silent Watch/Field Finds
Do these outside activities in small groups. For schools with sparse field areas, each group should mark its area with a large round circle of yarn. Have the group sit around it for Watch and investigate inside it for Field Finds.

When first out in the field, emphasize the use of hand lenses by asking each student to examine a flower or leaf closely using all three magnifications.

Take kids out into the middle of the field, have them make a circle (magnetic elbows), then have everyone turn around and face out – take five steps forward and that's their place from which to observe the field. Ring a bell to signal the start and end of the two minutes of silent watching.

On a pouring rainy day, could lug in 3 clumps of field (on sleds like we do Rotting Logs). Have groups make a record of their finds and try to extract an individual plant – a lesson in root tangle!

This is a great unit to introduce field journaling! Give students time outside to draw, make notes, record observations.

Order of Activities

You might want to rearrange the order of activities to do Who Am I? after the outside activities.

Sharing Circle
Ask each child to respond to the question: “what would you like to be if you lived in a field, and why?” Go around circle and keep track (mentally or written) of everyone's choices. As closure, talk about what else you'd need to make a good, healthy field ecosystem – probably lots of plants.

Extensions
You might want to have each child draw one field plant and animal then create a large group mural of a field by combining everyone's drawings.

Habitat song can be sung as a Rap.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas:

• A habitat is like a home, the place where all of an organism's needs are met.
• A field is a habitat shared by many different kinds of plants and animals.
• Organisms in fields are exposed to sun, wind, rain and snow.
• A field may meet all of the needs of an animal or be only a part of an animal's habitat.
• Animals and plants in a field are interconnected in a food web.

Vocabulary:
Habitat, Components, Producers, Photosynthesis, Consumers, Herbivores, Carnivores, Predator, Prey, Food Chain, Food Web

Skills:

• Active listening to identify the basic components of habitat.
• Questioning and discussion to learn characteristics and identity of animals that inhabit a field
• Role playing to understand the interdependence of animals and plants in a field that are interconnected in a food web
• Observing, listening to, and making record of plants and animals and signs of animals in a field

Grade Expectations
Grades PK-K (S30, S38) A field is “home” for a variety of plants and animals. Plants and animals that live in a field need sunlight, water, food and air to live.

Grades 1-2 (S34, S35) A field as habitat provides water, food, shelter and space for plants and animals that live there. Plants in a field need sunlight to survive. All animals that live in a field depend on plants. Some animals in a field eat plants for food; other animals eat animals that eat plants (food chain).

Grades 3-4 (S34, S35, S36) Energy derived from food is needed for plants and animals that live in a field to stay alive and grow. A field serves as habitat for plants and animals whose needs are met there. Plants and animals in a field interact with one another in various ways including providing food.

Grades 5-6 (S30, S34, S35, S36) A field is habitat for plants and animals that are adapted to the conditions there. Energy within a field ecosystem originates from the sun. Plants are 'producers'. Animals are 'consumers'. Food webs model the interdependent relationships that organisms engage in as they acquire their food and energy needs. Plants support food webs in a field habitat.

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